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Private Practice Register to be fully rolled-out to hospitals by early 2020

Register now contains more than 16,000 practitioner profiles

Emily Perryman | 4th November 2019

Healthcode has revealed plans to complete the roll-out of
The Private Practice Register (PPR) to more than 300 independent hospitals and
NHS Private Patient Units (PPUs) by early 2020.

The PPR now has more than 16,000 practitioner profiles
which are managed and kept up-to-date by the practitioners themselves.

More than 40% of practitioners have made amendments to
their PPR profile so far in 2019. Data is housed securely in a dedicated data
warehouse in the UK and access is via encrypted connections.

All hospitals will have access to The PPR basic service,
which will enable them to search the database for consultants and practitioners
who have been linked to their organisation. They can then view basic
information from the profiles including their name, specialty registration body
and details of their practice at the relevant hospital.

To help with clinical governance, hospitals will also be
able to view profile alerts about GMC warnings, overdue indemnity insurance and
overdue appraisals for all profiles associated to their site.

Hospitals can also subscribe to The PPR standard service,
which offers more information and features to support consultant oversight. For
example, they can view the full profile of clinicians including their NHS and
private practice, qualifications, medical secretary details, bank payment
details and GMC status. They will also receive notifications of updates to a
clinician’s profile including GMC warnings which are available through
Healthcode’s GMC republication license.

The next update of The PPR will augment this with fields
showing practitioners’ responsible officer, designated body, revalidation
status, when their GMC fees are due and where else they hold practising
privileges.

Hospitals can only correct and update information about a
practitioner’s work within their own organisation, such as practice hours and
start and end dates of practice. The practitioner is notified when these
changes are made.

Fiona Booth, Healthcode’s head of provider programmes and
strategy, said The PPR will be another means of demonstrating to Care Quality
Commission inspectors that a hospital has embedded measures to improve
oversight of practising privileges and clinical governance.

“And with the Paterson Inquiry report due soon, it is
important that the private healthcare sector shows the public that we can put
our own house in order,” she added. “We will continue to work closely with our
hospital user groups to ensure that The PPR provides the insights they need.”